Nora had just carried her pencils and sketchbook of fashionable dresses to her adopted corner in one of the baroness’s numerous receiving parlors when a footman arrived bearing the morning’s correspondence on a silver platter.

“Lady Roundtree is still abed,” Nora informed him with a smile.

He ought to know as much, even if he never ventured upstairs. The baroness rarely roused before noon, especially now that she’d taken to adding a few more drops of laudanum to her nightly cup of warm milk.

Nora, on the other hand, had suffered a restless night. Between heart-pounding recollections of the moment when handsome Mr. Grenville had believed her worthy of an invitation to dance, and nightmares of how and why private sketches she’d sent to her family had become gossip fodder for the entire ton, sleep had proven elusive.

Perhaps the resulting exhaustion explained why a long moment passed before she realized the footman still stood in the open doorway, silver tray outstretched with stoic patience.

“For me?” Heart racing, Nora leapt to her feet and flew across the room.

In the center of the silver tray rested a single folded letter.

The parchment was thin and of obvious poor quality. Its contents had been secured not with a large seal and expensive wax, but with a small teardrop from a cheap, tallow candle. Worn indentations in telltale patterns indicated the paper had been previously employed for some other task, and later repurposed in the form of this letter.

A note from her family. Nora clutched it to her chest in relief.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the footman.

He bowed in acknowledgement before disappearing with the now empty tray.

Nora spun in a circle before sudden fear gripped her heart. What if this was not happy tidings from the farm? What if something had happened to Grandmother or Grandfather, and she was too far away to help?

She pulled a footstool as close to the fire as she dared and broke the droplet of wax with trembling hands.

The writing was definitely her brother’s hand. His penmanship was the only one she could easily read. Not because his handiwork was more refined than their grandparents’, but because Carter made it purposefully less so.

Big, printed letters instead of tightly flowing script. Large spaces between each word. Nora swallowed. Grandfather would have an apoplexy to see Carter “waste” precious paper so, but whatever was in the message, Carter had wished to ensure Nora capable of reading it.

She tamped down her fears and focused on the first line.

As she was alone in the receiving parlor, Nora did not bother to hide an amused roll of her eyes. Carter had always begun correspondence to her in this manner. According to her brother, it was to remind Nora of her own worth.

Perhaps that was true. But the familiar greeting also served another—arguably more important—purpose.

It centered her on the task of reading. Reminded her which way the “b” and “d” pointed. And it allowed her to begin each letter with at least one line of easy comprehension—of success—before the arduous, humiliating work of making it through the rest of the words, letter by dancing letter.

Nora straightened her shoulders. She hated feeling so stupid. So helpless. So frustrated with her inability to simply scan the contents to find out if Carter had written with news of her grandparents’ health, or perhaps some insight into how the sketches she had mailed to their farm might have ended up in a London printing press a hundred miles from their home in the West Midlands.

She would have to decipher this line by line. Word by word.

Wasn’t that just like an adoring younger brother? Nora lowered her eyes with a sad smile. She was glad he did not suspect the truth.

She was queen of fetching items from other rooms, of helping the baroness in and out of chairs, of enduring long stretches of being no more noticeable than a speck of dust on the carpet by sketching better versions of her life in the sanctity of her own mind.

Recasting reality so that she was the one who received fancy invitations. So that she was the popular debutante laughing with her friends. So that she was the lady whirling gaily amid a crowded dance floor.

Instead, despite finding herself in the most populous city in England, attending the biggest crushes of the Season, Nora was far lonelier than she had ever been back home on their simple sheep farm. There, she had been an important part of everyday life.

Nora doubted this. In her six-and-twenty years, she had seen more than enough elderly farmers progress from spry and capable to bent husks of the people they had once been.

Already it took a full hour each morning for Grandmother to uncurl her warped hands. The once slender fingers were now disfigured by painful, swollen knots at each joint. Her reward for long years of dipping candles, chopping vegetables, scrubbing pots, washing linens, churning butter. The list of chores was endless.

As soon as Nora was big enough to wield a broom, she had helped out as best she could. Her grandparents were her entire world.

When she and Carter had been orphaned, they had taken both children in without hesitation. Never mind that there was never enough money. There was always more than enough love.

Her heart gave a homesick pang. Both of her grandparents’ hearing had steadily declined over the last several years. Grandmother tried to mask the issue by speaking softer and softer in an attempt to blend with those around her, whereas Grandfather simply increased his volume as if it were not he, but rather everyone else, who had gone deaf.

If only that were the extent of their problems. Just a matter of raising one’s voice.

Nora’s shoulders slumped. They needed so much more. Grandfather’s eyesight and poor hip were even worse than Grandmother’s arthritis, rendering him little able to tend the crops anymore. Nora had taken over Grandmother’s duties, and Carter had taken over all of Grandfather’s, but mere labor wasn’t enough.

The farm needed money to stay afloat.

Nora’s vision blurred. She missed him so much. Her brother had been her confidant, her rock, her tutor, her playmate, her best friend for her whole life. In as long as she could remember, they had never once been separated for more than a day.

Until now.

She took a deep breath. Here she was, in a receiving parlor the size of their cottage, perched on a footstool that cost more than their farm earned in a year, accepting the morning post from a literal silver platter that was polished and burnished every single day by a coterie of maids dedicated solely to the task of ensuring every silver surface in the house reflected as brilliantly as a looking-glass.

Carter, on the other hand, was back home doing the work of four people. He was going to make himself sick. But what else could they do?

Guilt twisted Nora’s stomach. Keeping up with the farm had been exhausting enough when divided between the two of them. She had no idea how long he could possibly manage alone. It wasn’t fair.

She let out a choking laugh. Of course he would; Carter’s stomach was a bottomless hole.

His heart was just as boundless.

He was the real reason Nora was in London. When the summons came from some spoiled, distant cousin, Nora’s first impulse had been to disregard it entirely. The farm needed her. So did her brother. Her grandparents. Their encroaching forgetfulness alone required near-constant oversight.

Besides, Nora barely knew this cousin. More importantly, the baroness didn’t recall much about her country bumpkin cousin at all, or why on earth would she have invited a farm maid to London?

But it wasn’t a social visit. It was employment. Six to eight weeks, just until the splints came off and the baroness regained range of motion.

Nora snorted. She had yet to take a meal with Lady Roundtree.

Her shoulders tightened. She hadn’t wished to come to London. But Lady Roundtree was prepared to pay handsomely to have Nora attend her. Her years as caretaker to her grandparents and her blood relation to the baroness made Nora the perfect choice.

If only she wasn’t needed more at home.

She stared at the wiggling words on the page.

Carter had been the one to point out that this was their chance. With the money she earned, they could purchase more sheep and use them for income, rather than rely on backbreaking fieldwork. There would be more free time to spend with the family. The four of them could finally have lives beyond slaving to maintain the farm.

All she had to do was spend a couple easy months as nursemaid to a baroness. How hard could it be?

Nora frowned. Good fortune was inherently… well, good. So why did Carter’s confession sound so ominous? She worked out the next line.

She sighed. Carter was always trying to make her feel better about her difficulties with book learning by pointing out that pencils could be used for more than just sums and penmanship. No one in town could draw half as well as Nora, even when she barely paid attention. It was a skill most people didn’t have, he claimed.

Sure. That might even be true. But what did it matter? Nora couldn’t sketch a successful harvest into their larder or collect milk and wool with judicious use of ink. Art was an idle pastime, not a source of income. Her hands were better employed elsewhere.

Nora groaned. The sketches she’d sent home hadn’t gone astray. They’d been purposefully diverted. By her well-meaning, feather-brained, supportive-to-a-fault little brother.

Nora blinked and started that line over. Surely she had misread. She tried again.

A five-pound note. FIVE.

For each one.

Her breath caught. That meant a single sketch was worth the same as fifty loaves of bread. That meant her family now had fifty loaves of bread, or the wisest equivalent purchase. Her brother would have immediately replenished their larder. Or acquired more sheep.

Her heart pounded.

On an annuity of five hundred per year, a frugal family of four could afford not only themselves, but a servant or two. Could Nora potentially earn the same sum with a hundred satirical sketches? Might their days of poverty soon be behind them?

This was life-changing.

This was madness.

This could not be.

Nora’s fingers shook with sudden terror as the full ramifications gripped her.

The sketches were raw, unfiltered glimpses into ton life. They were quick, rude, irreverent. They poked holes in High Society’s glossy veneer solely for the private amusement of the Winfield family. And Carter had sold them?

Panic tightened her chest. She had not signed the sketches, but that did not mean she was safe from discovery. Or being sacked from her current position. This reckless act could jeopardize her companion salary as well as any hope for more drawings.

What had Carter done?

Triple.

No. Absolutely not.

She’d already seen what could happen when ten thousand people with nothing better to do got their hands on the same silly sketch. Overnight, the Earl of Wainwright had become the “Lord of Pleasure,” and not just in the tongue-in-cheek commentary Nora made at home, but to the entire haut ton.

Not just the upper classes, she realized at once. Caricatures were just as popular with the have-nots as the haves. Perhaps more so. Not only were such sketches a window into a life peasants could never experience for themselves, the accompanying biting commentary offered power. A way to mock one’s betters, to laugh right back at the vaulted paragons who had long belittled their “lessers.”

Nora bit her lip. She could see the allure: the commercial value her art might have to a printing house, the impact the money earned could have on her family.

She could also see the danger. Carter claimed the confidential intermediary protected their identities, but for how long? Every published drawing risked the very employment opportunity that made the sketches possible. Every new caricature would be another nail in her coffin if anyone should ever learn the true identity of the artist behind the drawings.

If she were found out, she would lose everything. Her post with the baroness. Any hope of earning desperately needed money.

And yet, it was a way to help her family right now.

The fastest way to help her family.

She leaned back in her chair. The first salary as companion would not be paid until after the first month.

In the meantime, her already overworked brother was stretched beyond all reason until she could return home to do her part. With even more money, he and both grandparents could hire a maid-of-all-work to take over Nora’s duties inside the cottage. With enough earnings, they could all sleep at night without fear of the morrow.

With enough sketches, they could free themselves from poverty.

She lowered the letter to her lap and stared at the crackling fire.

Was it worth the risk? The sole reason she was in London was because Nora and her brother hoped the money she earned as a companion would change their fate. To be able to survive without fretting over every ha’penny.

Her grandparents had built their country home with their own sweat and blood. They loved their farm and never wished to leave it. Not that there was anywhere else to go. Their land was all they had.

With enough money to purchase a crucial quantity of sheep, the farm could finally become self-sufficient. Milk, cheese, wool. A maid for the cottage, a young farmhand or two for the sheep. Carter could finally have a life outside of the farm.

Nora could finally have a life.

And her grandparents would never have to lift an arthritic finger again. They could spend the rest of their lives in much-deserved peace. They could be happy.

She rubbed her face with her hands.

To caricature or not to caricature, that was the question. One potential outcome was anonymity and financial security. The other potential outcome was total ruination and a return to abject poverty. But was it already too late to walk away?

The price of refusal held nebulous returns.

In the best-case scenario, Nora would somehow remain gainfully employed, never once be asked to read aloud to her mistress or commit any other failures that would prove her unworthy of a role as companion, and she would return home ten weeks from now with eighty pounds in her pocket. A respectable amount that would at least cover the purchase of more sheep.

In the worst-case scenario, Nora’s shortcomings as a proper companion would be quickly discovered, her post summarily withdrawn, and herself returned to her family just as destitute as she began.

Neither path held any guarantees. There was no way to see into the future.

Her stomach churned.

Was this how Society gentlemen felt when they wagered the deeds to their unentailed properties on the turn of a card?

She’d sketched ton life as a lark. Not to poke fun at anyone or anything specific, but because it was easier than trying to write a letter. She could dash off a far more eloquent sketch in half the time it would take her to scratch out a single, painstaking, illegible, misspelled sentence.

And she loved to draw. She always had. It had never hurt anything. Even this time.

Once she had gotten over her initial horror at Lord of Pleasure replacing the Earl of Wainwright’s actual name, the baroness’s gossipy friends had quickly pointed out that the infamy only added to his rakish allure, rather than harm his reputation in any way.

It made sense, Nora supposed. She hadn’t been mocking him, but the vapid ninnies who swooned at his very name.

So what if Nora drew vignettes of real people? Did not more celebrated caricaturists do the very same thing? Indeed, was that not the job?

There was no consequential difference between Nora’s anonymous sketches and the infamous drawings of men like Gillray and Cruikshank.

Except for the part about her hopes, dreams, reputation, and future being dashed to bits if her secret ever got out.

She turned over her brother’s letter to hide the dancing, damning words from view.

A tiny drawing greeted her on the other side.

Three circles with sticks for bodies joined stick-hands on the left. A speech balloon emanating from all three smiling mouths read, We love you!

Nora straightened her spine. She couldn’t afford to turn down any opportunity to provide for her family.

If a pair of drawings could garner more money than she could earn in a week, was there really any choice but to say yes and draw as many as she could while she was still here?

She’d already been feeling guilty about not being present to do her share of the chores. This was how she could help. Working as both companion and secret caricaturist would essentially be holding two jobs instead of one, and could earn her far more in the same amount of time.

More importantly, she owed it to her grandparents. Not only had they taken her in when there was nowhere else to go, they were Nora’s only family. Carter’s only family.

She couldn’t bear the thought of a loved one suffering all over again. Nora was determined to do everything in her power to keep her family safe and fed for as long as possible.

Even if it meant assuming a hidden identity as the most infamous caricaturist in London.